Kids’ Hemophilia Drugs a Big Part of State Medicaid Spending

The treatment of hemophilia is expensive, with a new study showing that childhood hemophilia treatment accounts for a significant part of state Medicaid budgets.

Treatment costs for one childhood illness, hemophilia, may use up a big chunk of a state’s Medicaid budget, a new study out of California shows.

The researchers found that treatments for hemophilia — a rare, inherited disorder in which blood does not clot normally — accounted for the largest share of spending on outpatient drugs among publicly insured children in California with serious chronic illnesses.

The study “underscores the potential effect of new, expensive but [effective] pharmaceuticals on public insurance programs for children with chronic illness,” wrote a group led by Sonja Swenson of Stanford University.

Her team published the findings July 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers tracked 2010-2012 data from more than 34,300 publicly insured children and young adults under the age of 21 in California with serious chronic health problems.

Costs per child for the study period varied widely: From just 16 cents for one patient to nearly a whopping $57 million for drugs for another, unnamed patient. Swenson said her team was “shocked” by the latter amount.

Hemophilia treatment took a big share of outpatient drug costs: 42 percent of spending, according to the study.